68. Sydney
sixty-eight
sydney
I don’t think I’ve been warm in a week.
Between the ice bath bestowed upon me by Bear and his brother, the freezing room they kept me in, the blood loss, and then the blood-transfusion-driven fever and chills, I’m just… done . And ready to jump into a bonfire if it would mean getting warm.
When I drag myself out of the shower, later the same day I got home from the hospital, Carter waits for me. He’s fully dressed, standing in my bathroom leaning against the back of the door like he’s trying to keep himself from jumping on me.
It would make me feel normal, though…
“Hi,” he whispers.
I haven’t seen much of him in the past week. I think he came to the hospital, but I don’t have solid memory of it. I just remember him holding my hand, drifting into consciousness to find to his head resting on the side of my bed as he, too, slept.
“Hey.” I reach for a towel. “Long time no see.”
He cracks a small smile. “Yeah.”
“And intruding on my shower time…”
“Best place to catch you naked,” he replies.
I nod carefully. “I got the all-clear. With the stitches…”
He stands straighter, a pained look crossing his face. “I, uh, heard about Penn’s proclamation of love.”
Ah.
“Yeah.”
I keep the towel wrapped around me and use another one to dry my limbs. He watches me brush out my hair slowly, then blot out the excess moisture with the second towel. Penn saying he loved me—even with all the extra feelings about L. tied up in it—was overwhelming. In the best way possible, maybe?
But also, like something was missing.
Something that’s now standing in front of me.
How can I tell Penn that I love him— I do —and yet still feel incomplete? One puzzle piece slotted into place. But there are more pieces. In the end, I didn’t have to tell him. He knew. He preemptively accepted it.
“And you feel the same,” Carter says.
I focus on him. “I… yeah.”
I focus on the way his expression breaks, and how it breaks a little bit of me, too.
“But, Carter—I can’t say I don’t also feel the same for you, too. Because I do. We let each other go when it got scary. But I think I like scary from you. I’ve started to crave it.” I inch toward him. There’s nowhere for him to go—the door at his back, me at his front. “I can’t pinpoint when I fell in love with you. I think I’ve been falling since you didn’t let me disappear into FSU. You followed me. You saw me. And I see you .”
He swallows.
“I love you,” I repeat. “I’m in love with you.”
I wait for him to leave. For him to brush me aside and hit the road because he won’t be my only .
But he doesn’t. His gaze seems to deepen and darken, and suddenly he’s got my towel in his fingers, and he pulls it off my body in a quick jerk.
It drops to the floor, leaving me exposed. Bruises across my ribs, the stitches on the inside of my thigh, the ring of deep bruises around my neck—although, to be fair, those were visible even with the towel. There are burn marks where they touched me with the jumper cables, but those feel like nothing compared to the havoc they wreaked inside my body.
“Don’t touch me like I’m broken,” I beg him.
He exhales. Grasps my hips. Shifts me so my back is to the door. He braces his forearm against the wood next to my head and leans in real slow. I meet his storm-blue eyes, but my gaze flicks to his lips.
I close my eyes in anticipation.
The touch is sweeter than I remember. Soft, like a brush of sugar across my lips. Then away.
I open my eyes again.
His warm, throaty chuckle meets me. “I like that look, dream girl.”
“What look?” I breathe.
“The one that says, more .”
“Give me more, then.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
He kisses me again. Stronger. Sparks flood through me, and I grasp at his shirt. I use him and the wall to steady myself, to arch up into him.
More , I think, opening my mouth.
He tastes like strawberries. He scores my lower lip with his teeth, takes his fill of my mouth. He shifts forward, pinning me to the door with his hips. Showing me exactly what he thinks of this .
I tug at his shirt.
“Naughty,” he says, barely pulling away. “You’re not cleared to exert yourself.”
“You can do the work,” I say. “Please.”
My hand travels down, palming him through his pants.
He groans. “You sorceress. Don’t tell.”
“Our little secret,” I promise.
He moves my hands aside and shoves his pants down, unbuttoning his shirt and revealing his drool-worthy abdomen.
And a new addition?—
“Is that a tattoo?”
He smirks, but—it says dream girl’s along the left side of the V of his stomach. Like he’s saying that that is?—
“Like it?”
I wordlessly nod.
“Good.” He hoists me up.
I let out a low noise when the tip of his cock slides through my center. He finds my entrance easily and slowly pushes into me.
I groan.
It’s an odd combination of pain and pleasure. My body still aches. He’s careful not to hit the stitches on my inner thigh, or even grip that leg and force it around him. But it means… I’m split open wider, and he goes deeper.
“You feel like my dream,” he confesses, his lips at my temple. Running through my hair. “I’m going to wait to say it back to you, Sydney. But I hope you feel it.”
It being… love.
I do. With every stroke, every kiss he peppers me with, it doesn’t feel like he’s making love to me—nothing so sappy as that. His thrusts are still hard enough to bump my spine against the door, to cause it to shake in its frame. I see stars. But I see everything he wants to give me, too.
I fall harder. Is that possible? I was already there—but I just sink deeper into it.
Into him.
He catches me.
When he makes me come, it hurts. It’s like my brain rattles, everything vibrates. I cry out, and he comes a second later, spilling inside me. He keeps me full while I catch my breath and try to relate the pain into pleasure.
Not a hard task.
Eventually, he lowers my feet to the floor. His expression is still soft, and he tucks a lock of my wet hair behind my ear. “Get dressed. I need to show you something.”
My stomach flips when we turn onto the driveway that leads to the warehouse. Each bump across the gravel hurts, but it’s more of an emotional hurt. Like a stab in the chest, until I’m struggling to breathe.
Carter’s hand lands on my thigh. “No one will hurt you.”
I nod, although I’m not sure if I actually believe it. My lungs are tight.
We park next to Oliver’s bike. What I think is his anyway. I narrow my eyes at it, then Carter. Oliver left Penn and I alone… Did he come straight here?
Is he fighting?
“Is he okay?” My voice is thick.
Carter inclines his chin, then gets out. He circles around and opens my door, offering his hand. I take it and let him help me out of the car. He keeps ahold of me as we approach the door. The wind whips at us, snatching pieces of my hair and the flap of my jacket. I wrap my free arm around my stomach.
I don’t want to be here, but something tells me this is important.
We cross the warehouse. I pause at the bloodstain on the floor, my gut churning.
“Bear’s brother,” he says. “I shot him.”
My brows pull together. I don’t remember that. I don’t remember any guns going off… I barely remember Carter getting me down from where I hung, and wrapping the belt from my neck around my thigh instead. It’s all hazy, minus the sharp pinches of pain that kept me awake.
I lose track of events after that, though. Being carried… then nothing until the bright lights of the hospital emergency department.
My gaze jumps to the storage room. The door is closed, blocking my sight into the room where they held and… tortured me. I don’t want to think about torture. The sharp pain of the jumper cables, the water… the inability to breathe.
We go into the offices, and I stop short.
Oliver is here. He sits in one of the desk chairs, tipped back with his booted feet propped up on a table. He drops them to the floor at our entrance and rises.
“Sydney.”
I look between them. “What’s going on?”
“She shouldn’t be here,” Oliver says to Carter.
Carter’s expression darkens. “Shouldn’t she?”
“We talked about this,” Oliver hisses. “How she should be at home recovering, not?—”
“Not what?” I interrupt.
They go quiet. I face Carter and glare at him until he relents, slowly nodding toward the computer on the desk. It’s facing Oliver, so I release Carter’s hand and move around to see it. It puts me in close proximity to Oliver.
Something I shouldn’t mind.
I don’t mind.
But my heart lurches, and our arms almost brush…
Damn it.
The missing piece.
I ignore the monitor and focus on his face. At the way his lips press into a thin line, seemingly waiting for me to rebuke him or push him away. At the heat in his hazel eyes—more green than brown today, I note—as his gaze tracks across my face.
I wind my arm through his, keeping him with me, and face the screen.
My knees almost give out. Only my hold on Oliver keeps me standing.
Fear lances through my body at the sight of Bear. I don’t need to see his face—he wears that same, creepy mask, half obscured by duct tape around his head—to know it’s him. He’s wearing the same clothes. And even though he’s handcuffed, too, it doesn’t mean I’m safe from him.
“What is this?” I manage. “Why?—”
There’s another security camera pointed outside. I focus on the movement in it. Penn’s car pulls up beside theirs, and he parks and climbs out without hesitation.
“You’re not alone,” Oliver says. “You’re surrounded by guys who…”
I glance at him. “Guys who what?”
“Love you.” He clears his throat. “Carter. Penn. Right?”
My chest is thundering, but I find myself nodding along anyway. Carter didn’t say it, but he showed it. But… that means Oliver is out, right?
“And you?” Carter asks him. “You’re included in that, too, right, Oliver?”
He doesn’t answer.
I slowly pull away, just as Penn enters. I rush into his arms, and he catches me with an oof . His arms bind around my back, and I fit perfectly against him to bury my face in his chest. His chin comes down and rests on top of my head.
“Your hair is damp, princess,” Penn rumbles.
Because I was too anxious to fully dry it before Carter and I left.
“What’s got you upset?”
“Oliver won’t admit that he loves her. We’ve got a bear in a cage…” Carter scoffs. “More the first thing than the second, I’d bet.”
“Well.” Penn leans back slightly. He runs his thumb along my cheek. “Let’s deal with the bear in a cage first, then we can smack some sense into Ollie.”
My chin wobbles. “What… what’s the plan?”
“Reenact what he did to you on him,” Oliver says. “Then kill him.”
My jaw drops.
Carter slaps his hand to his forehead. “Tact. Where is your godforsaken tact?”
“Oh, sorry.” Oliver sneers. “Let’s go in and pour him some tea, ask him to pray for forgiveness, and then tell him to lie in the hole we dug out back.”
“Jesus,” Penn groans.
I… smile .
It’s ridiculous. So ridiculous, in fact, that I can’t help but let it play out in my mind. And the more it goes on, the more funny it seems. Until I’m silently laughing, my shoulders shaking with my need to contain it. I turn away from Penn, holding my stomach as it cramps with my uncontrolled laughter.
And when it finally passes, I face them. The sober reality of the situation falls on me.
“Okay,” I finally say. I clear my throat. “Torture and murder. Let’s do it.”